MMMM Food! I like to eat it and cook it and then eat it! And THEN blog about it!

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Herbs and Plans

Herbs:I went to prairie gardens today to buy some new plants because I spent all afternoon looking at pictures of dogs online and filling out a form to adopt a dog from the Champaign Humane Society if they ever get a less than 1 year old male shih tzu abandoned with them. The next best thing after a dog, of course, is plants (because cats are disgusting, freaky creatures), so I went in and picked up a hibiscus, a generic looking jade, and a sage:

This sage alleges that its leaves are tasty muddled in iced tea, which I believe having smelled said leaves and will try soon with a nice glass of one of the teas I brought back from England. I contemplated purchasing some other herbs while at the prairie gardens: they had mint, rosemary, and basil. While I cook with basil and rosemary quite a bit and would probably use a lot more mint if I had a big pot of it sitting there fresh and minty smelling on my countertop, I'd read on line that plucking basil leaves off of a basil plant frequently can eventually result in the plant only growing leaves with a "woody" taste, and the mint and rosemary were just kind of ugly.

In addition to being NOT ugly, the sage smells quite nice. Hopefully it will not die, as 75% of my other plants have (lifetime.)

Plans:The prairie gardens also had strawberry bushes, which put me in the mind of making a strawberry pie. I couldn't find a universally acclaimed strawberry pie recipe on epicurious, so I'm going with a Strawberry and White Chocolate Mousse Tart instead.

6 oz white chocolate

Seedless strawberry jam

1 Lemon

16 oz strawberries

When I added the tart recipe to my epicurious recipe box, I noticed that I had not yet made Vietnamese Chicken and Pineapple soup this summer, nor had I made any of the thai or vietnamese soups that I had added on a thai and vietnamese soup recipe adding binge after I decided I was too poor to go out for thai food last week, and, hey, look, I only have 2 more weeks of summer vacation and I'm planning on submitting the paper I've been writing all summer tommorrow (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: An Event-Related Potential Study of Lexical Relationships and Prediction in Context, to the Journal of Memory and Language. Keep your fingers crossed for speedy, positive reviews!) so time to have at it, eh?

1 Pineapple

3/4 lb Skinless boneless chicken breast

4 Hot little chiles

Garlic

1/2 lb Shiitake mushrooms

2 Large tomatoes

1 cup Bean sprouts

Fish Sauce

Basil (1/3 cup)

Mint (1/3 cup)

Lemongrass (1/3 cup)

Oregano

Soup doesn't always photograph well, so perhaps I will have to even it out with extra photos of the strawberry tart?